


A New Math

by Siria



Category: Cupid (TV 1998)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-13
Updated: 2007-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That summer, her body grows a new geometry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Math

That summer, her body grows a new geometry. Alex knew how her body fit together, once, learnt it all in days upon days spent loving her in tangled sheets, days that he remembers only as that first, heady, blurred rush of loving her; now all the lines and curves of her cast a new shadow on him, rewriting themselves even as he touches her, showing him more of her with each new day. It's strange, to see how she's changed and changing because of what they have made together: how her stomach swells daily, ripe with promise; how her smile is rich, turned inwards, beyond where he can go; how her body is finding a new centre around the life growing within her.

He doesn't want to mess this up.

Sometimes, Alex wonders if he can learn all of her again, this new Claire he's been gifted with—wake to watch her in the grey light of a Chicago morning, lie with her when she falls asleep each night—map the points of difference and all the things unchanging. Make an atlas of her, a chart to lead him back to himself, a way to bring him home when he thinks he's lost his way—run fingertips along the rounded curve of her arm, stroke back her hair to kiss the pale and secret nape, tangle himself up in all the wild and perfect spill of her limbs. Make an anchor, hold him here. Her smile has changed; her kisses have not. He makes lists in his head, tries to describe her, outline her, reaches for words that are always inadequate for _then_ and _now_ and _Claire_.

He came back to her, and he doesn't want to leave, not ever again; but she's leading him somewhere new.

Claire knows some of what he's thinking, or maybe nothing at all; but she takes his hand, presses it against her so that his fingers splay out against her stomach and says _this is your daughter_. Alex swallows, and curls himself around her more closely; the rise and fall of Claire's breathing is echoed in the thrum of their child's feet against her mother's ribcage, her father's hand, in the stunned and syncopated rhythm of Alex's heart.

"I," he murmurs when Claire reaches up to stroke his hair, "I... you know."

"Yes," she says, and fits herself against him, closer, closer, perfect, "yes, Alex, I know."


End file.
